Commentary on the Humble Remonstrance of the Company of Stationers 1643

A petition from the Company of Stationers to Parliament to introduce some form of legislative regulation of the press. The petition is significant in revealing the extent to which the Stationers depended upon the state to support the regulation of the book trade, as well as the nature of the various public and private interest arguments upon which they sought to base their claim. The commentary articulates the various arguments presented by the Stationers within their petition. The benefits of the legal regulation they suggested concerned not only the censorship and suppression of seditious and heretical texts, but also facilitated the advancement of learning and knowledge and the flourishing of the printing industry itself. In addition, the petition presents the figure of the ‘author' as reliant upon the benefit of his work, and that the ‘production of the Brain' was to be regarded as equivalent to any other commodity or chattel.